The Rutgers Center for Risk and Responsibility is planning a conference on The American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law of Liability Insurance. The conference will be held Friday, February 27, 2015, at Rutgers Law School‒Camden.

The Principles project aims, as Director Lance Liebman wrote, to draft “coherent doctrinal statements based largely on current state law, but also grounded in economic efficiency and in fairness to both insureds and insurers.” The ALI has approved Chapter 1, Basic Liability Insurance Contract Principles, and Chapter 2, Management of Potentially Insured Liability Claims. The project has sparked spirited debate, and this is an appropriate time to assess the work yet still early enough to influence the project. The conference will focus on issues raised in Chapters 1 and 2.

The Principles potentially have significance far beyond the law of liability insurance. Their distinctive approach to interpretation charts a middle ground between formalist and contextualist approaches which may provide a model for the interpretation of other insurance contracts and of other types of contracts, from standard form contracts to commercial contracts. The rules on the duty to defend and the duty to make reasonable settlement decisions will impact tort law and litigation and raise ethical issues. Therefore, the Principles should be of interest of scholars in contracts, torts, litigation, and professional responsibility as well as insurance and insurance law scholars.

The conference will engage academics and practicing lawyers in discussion of the Principles.

The structure of the day is evolving, but likely topics include panels on the Principles’ interpretation rules, the duty to defend, and the duty to settle. Confirmed speakers include George Cohen (Virginia); Mark Geistfeld (NYU); Bruce Hay (Harvard); Leo Martinez (UC Hastings); and Jennifer Wriggins (Maine). Reporters Tom Baker (Penn) and Kyle Logue (Michigan) will attend and respond. The Rutgers Law Journal may publish the papers from the conference.

Participation is invited from a broad range of scholars with interests relevant to in these topics. Submit abstracts by August 15, 2014, to Jay Feinman at feinman@camden.rutgers.edu. Papers will be due January 5, 2015.